11.2.15

I recently came across a feature on a new fashion label that unintentionally encapsulated precisely what is wrong with fashion design as a profession today. Without naming names, the revelation comes by way of one of the label’s founders: “With women we are exploring many more categories, more of an emphasis on style and being relevant to what’s happening in fashion, whereas with men it’s extremely timeless.” And this, after the article describes the men’s collection as “t-shirts, woven shirts, knits, jackets and chinos in muted, low-key colours” that, according to the same founder, men “won’t get called out on.”

Heavens to Betsy, we wouldn’t want men to get called out for what they’re wearing.

The problem is the concept of timelessness. In some contexts, the concept of timelessness represents a universal quality, a consistent solution to a persistent design problem, an aesthetic that transcends cultural identification, an idea whose relevance endures over long periods of time. Yet timelessness can also be a manifestation of the status quo, a conceptual frost that favours the static over the dynamic. “Timeless” becomes more excuse than rationale, an apology (without acknowledging it as such) for failing, not to innovate, but to even attempt innovation.

This isn’t to say that women’s fashion is the product of innovative design in and of itself while men’s fashion is fundamentally stagnant. Although there’s no question that the most fun in fashion design is to be found in products for women –see Mohop shoes, or early United Nude designs, for example – fashion designers, as the quote above reveals, nevertheless tend to deploy a conservative hybrid of recycled imagination and reactivity. The relevance to what’s happening in fashion, what’s trending for women, is essentially an example of cyclical cannibalism. Designers resurrect and reinvent past trends in women’s fashion over and over again, with variations marketed as more than they are. Once in a while, they fly their freak flag with wild and admittedly imaginative designs, but so what? They’re typically too impractical and artsy for daily wear. Men don’t get trends, but quality craftsmanship for “timeless” styles, aka lazy design.

For fashion design to be innovative, let alone revolutionary, it should purposefully upset the established order of gendered stereotypes, reject the homogenizing effects of mass production in favor of bespoke artisanship, and genuinely challenge the tension between individuality and social identity manifested in how we choose to appear. It’s not enough for fashion design to question design objects. It must also question the process and reasoning of design itself.

Anything else is just the same old pursuit of commoditized novelty, gendered to favour women with imagination and men with timelessness.

2.2.15

When The Division Bell was released in 1994, roughly at the beginning of my musical adventuring, my exposure to Pink Floyd had been more or less limited to The Wall. In comparison to that seminal rock album, one I’d unhesitatingly place as a 20th century masterpiece, The Division Bell seemed rather lacklustre. Tracks like A Great Day for Freedom recalled the melodic riffs I latched onto in the band…but then there were tracks that came across merely as soft and meandering. Prog rock, I thought, shouldn’t come across like soft jazz.

Over 20 years later, with a more evolved appreciation for music and greater knowledge of Pink Floyd’s word, the release of Endless River prompted me to return to The Division Bell and give it another listen. Surprise, surprise, the album doesn’t sound the same. While certainly not a landmark like The Wall, nor seminal like earlier albums (Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and so on), The Division Bell is also far from “rubbish” as Roger Waters unkindly judges it. Liberated from the demands of aggressive ambition, the album’s relaxed demeanour feels today, quite simply, like having a seat in a studio filled with musicians at ease with each other.

As a parallel album in space if not entirely in time – the music was recorded during the Division Bell sessions but unreleased at the time – Endless River serves as epitaph in memory of Richard Wright, a coda to Division Bell, and a pensive epilogue, as it were, to a classic and essential band. Predictably, the critical consensus circles the verdict that this is the sort of music put out by rock ‘n rollers after their exile to the retirement home. Some reviewers tack away from this view, praising the album for what it is, while others reject it as a disappointing, sighing retread. In the “end,” only one’s own ears can tell which it is.

Arguing over the musicianship strikes me as a technical dead end. But artistically, it’s hard to refute the argument that the band has not been driven towards conceptual grandeur after The Wall, an impulse that exited stage left along with Roger Waters. Endless River, like The Division Bell, is hardly a tremor let alone an earthquake insofar as visionary music goes. But as a straight-up listening experience, music for the senses more so than the mind, Endless River benefits from a quality that Division Bell exhibits after one gets past its drive to be “about” something. By foregoing the conceptual burden of lyrics (except for the last track, Louder Than Words) in favour of riffs and jams, improvisations and musical quotations, the album is allowed to stand for itself. Like its title suggests, the music isn’t about a particular destination, or even a port of origin (unless you want to bring band politics and other contexts into play), but a quietly compelling journey by accomplished musicians limited only by one’s preconceptions and expectations. More ceremonious than a fade to black, Endless River is best enjoyed in a darkened room as a mind trip from the planetarium to outer space – just like The Division Bell, in the end.

22.12.14

The Hobbit Trilogy comes to an end with the Battle of the Five Armies, and the verdict on Peter Jackson’s effort is that, good and bad, he achieves parity with his Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s reasonable enough, in my view, to declare the whole six-film sage a triumph of epic filmmaking, but I’d hold back from declaring it the Film Cycle to Rule Them All. (My money still rests with the Harry Potter films for that singular honour, although I’m not overly keen of crowning kings of the mountain.)

Where the Hobbit truly shines is in its first two installments, An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug. Here are films whose devotion to world-building and characterization, delivered in the form of journeys and mythical quests, offer relief from the numbing effect of clanging swords and armour that has otherwise defined the Tolkien cinematic universe. The Hobbit’s richer fantasy narrative ends up more anthropological than ornamental, serving as more than background for an essentially mundane war story. At last, it’s entirely possible to simply savor Middle-Earth – its landscapes, history, and cultures – and appreciate the characters’ places within it without being drummed over the head with mythological warfare.

Battle of the Five Armies, then, disappoints precisely because it concludes the trilogy with the very tiresome qualities of Lord of the Rings, consisting mostly of a long protracted battle between humans, dwarves, elves, and orcs. The most fascinating scenes occur at the beginning, with an exciting resolution to Smaug’s fiery return to the world and Gandalf’s rescue from the Necromancer’s clutches by Radagast the Brown, Galadriel (the always-welcome Cate Blanchett), the elven-king Elrond, and Christopher Lee’s Saruman. Past that, the familiar theme of greed-induced madness resurfaces as the dwarf-king Thorin Oakenshield corrodes from his exposure to gold “beyond the dreams of avarice,” of avarice, which sets up the film’s only real wellspring of drama. The rest is fighting, fighting, and more fighting, with the only question being: when is Gandalf actually going to do something cool and magical? (Answer: don’t get your hopes up. Gandalf is no Dumbledore.) Tiresome, indeed, but not boring or entirely without merit in a trilogy that justifiably makes an effort to intertwine with the Lord of the Rings narrative. (I say justifiably because I am not vested in Tolkien’s work as an admirer, and I have long shed my reservations about the need for fidelity when translating books to film.) As usual, Jackson delivers engaging production design and suitably big direction, just as his cast offers engaging performances even when the characters are thinly dimensioned.

Curiously, the Battle of the Five Armies ends rather anti-climatically, as if Peter Jackson and his writing team were still reeling from criticism over their endless parade of endings in The Return of the King. Bilbo, of course, returns home, but the fate of other characters are more or less cast into the narrative ether for viewers to piece together on their own or with a bit of help from the Fellowship of the Ring. I presume this wouldn’t be so stinging a quibble when immediately followed by a viewing of the first Lord of the Rings film. Still, the loose ending coupled with excess action isn’t enough to condemn the film too strongly. Battle of the Five Armies is, in the balance, a middling but reasonably satisfying chapter in the Middle-Earth saga.

But one thing has to go: this obsession with the higher frame rate, which makes the film look like a behind-the-scenes documentary rather than a gorgeous cinematic tableau. Photographic realism has its place, no doubt, but arguably not in fantasy films where style enhances the substance.

18.12.14

Dr. Who’s eighth series is like a pop song with inane lyrics but catchy hooks. It’s like a pastry that’s all sugar and no dough. As Texans might say, it’s all hat and no cattle. And yes, yes, while we’re piling on: that’s one heckuva naked emperor.

At this stage, that it compels watching at all is entirely due to Peter Capaldi. His fashion sense obviously suggests a return of Jon Pertwee, but his manner is a notable departure from the debonair third doctor’s gentlemen adventurer persona. (The eyebrows help a great deal, and I submit they’d be great representatives for Movember.) Some ado has been made about returning the Doctor to an older, more parental figure, but more interesting is his brooding and brusque antisocial persona. If Matt Smith’s doctor was a fizzy Alka-Seltzer masking the heartburn of morally-ambiguous anguish, Capaldi is the rending of the veil. Here’s a Doctor who more sharply expresses his isolation from fellow Time Lords and is acutely distressed by a preoccupation with his morality. The question he asks himself in the series opener, Deep Breath, is a worthwhile one: is he a good man? Considering the New Who Doctor has been responsible for large-scale destruction, it even rates as ironic. (And if you’re the type, like me, to point out that the Doctor is not a man from a human culture but, rather, an alien Time Lord, then join me in remembering that Dr. Who has never succeeded in presenting Time Lords as anything other than a haughty technocratic image of humanity.)
But asking serious questions is not New Who’s strength, so it’s no surprise that Clara is made to offer a reasonable noncommittal answer that sucks the air out of the question, leaving only a terrible gasping sound throughout the rest of the series. The lesson: never offer an answer to a brawny question without first roasting it in the crucible. Let it heat up. Let it blister. Just don’t serve it liked warmed-up leftover pudding before even offering the main course. The Doctor’s moral introspection falls apart by default, having never meaningfully coalesced. (At most, the Doctor’s so-called darker turn adds sizzle to the speculated return of the Valeyard, that distillation of the Doctor’s evil impulses supposed to manifest somewhere between the 12th and 13th regenerations. However, the only certainty is that if the Valeyard does make an appearance, it will be just as botched as everything else imported from Who’s classic era.)

The failure to extract any genuine drama from a provocative moral question is a predictable result from a show that consistently engages in the fiction writer’s version of yellow journalism – yellow storytelling, in which the sensational is achieved at the expense of integrity. Events, whether plot twists or character developments, are chosen for their energetic impact in a given moment, regardless of how they fit in the narrative whole. Other yellow elements in play: death that means nothing because it is frequently reversed, incoherent world-building, characters whose personalities change according to the momentary needs of the plot. This isn’t merely a judgment on my part. Showrunner Steve Moffat acknowledged it, having once said "a television series which embraces both the ideas of parallel universes and the concept of changing time can't have a continuity error—it's impossible for Doctor Who to get it wrong, because we can just say 'he changed time—it's a time ripple from the Time War.'" In other words: they make shit up as they go along, continuity be flushed.

Despite being a clever writer, Steven Moffat is all ideas and no execution. How insulting is it, then, that even Series 8’s ideas feel warmed over? Amy’s shabby treatment of Rory (on account of her fascination with the Doctor)? It’s back as Clara’s awful treatment of Danny, a soldier-turned-math-teacher with saintly patience and a sensitivity delivered with grating mushiness. The notion of the Earth cocooning an alien spaceship (The Runaway Bride) is conceptually revisited in Kill the Moon, which presents our lunar companion as a giant alien egg. The Doctor criticized as a mirror-image of the Dalek? That’s in there too. The sense of familiarity compounds a catalog of howlers, from frankly stupid plot ideas (Forest of the Night, in which magic fireflies make a forest magically appear to stave off a solar flare, and the smug self-congratulatory Robots of Sherwood which pits Robin Hood against the Sheriff of Nottingham’s robot army) to jarring implausibilities that mock the willing suspension of disbelief. “If only he had a time machine to fix this or that plot twist” is a frequent thought.

Kill the Moon is an astonishing example of telling a story in bad faith, willfully breaking the pact between storyteller and audience that makes possible the willing suspension of disbelief. Here’s the climax: the alien baby breaks out of its moon shell and immediately lays a new egg, without disturbing even a single blade of grass on our dear old Earth. I mean, c’mon. Really, Moffat? Really? Failing to consider gravity seems entirely appropriate for a show that is determined to be as weightless as possible. Then there’s the moral dilemma, thinly veiled as an abortion allegory, which is as manipulative as it is false: the choice between destroying the alien baby and preserving the moon, or allowing the earth and its population to be devastated by the moon’s destruction (and subsequent absence). Of course, this is a show that presents mental illness in children, or the potential of it, as something charming and whimsical rather than worth of serious reflection, so in retrospect it seems pointless to get in a huff for something so dumbly pretentious as Kill the Moon.

Even the series-long mystery, little more than brief disconnected codas to some episodes culminating in a two-part finale, is inert. It’s like a murder-mystery in which the detectives don’t even know there’s been a murder until the very end, when the villain starts chasing them. Randomly throw in cybermen, forget characters emphasized in those little codas, and voila – a narrative arc utterly without suspense. As for the return of the Master: right twist, wrong character.

Only two and 4/5ths episodes stand out – the bank robbery-themed Time Heist and Flatline, about an invasion by two-dimensional beings that boasts some most startling fun seen in a Dr. Who story in some time. A third, Mummy on the Orient Express, is a vintage fun kind of story, the monster in an enclosed environment, but suffers when it attempts to “explore” the drama between Clara and the Doctor.

There is no redemption for the show to be found in the Doctor’s relationship with a character who was more interesting when abstractly conceived as the Impossible Girl. This time around, she’s given a dual identity of teacher and adventurer, but with a singular personality that becomes increasingly shrill and repellant. For example, when the boyfriend she’s been lying to all series long is killed in a car accident, she strives to get the Doctor to reverse it not by asking as any normal person might, but by heading straight for a rather vile attempt at blackmail. We’ve seen variations in the Doctor-Companion relationship, but with a finale that ends with everyone lying to each other, we may very have a new dynamic: the need for therapy. Worse of all, series 8 is oversaturated with Clara, sidelining the Doctor to the role of eccentric deus ex machina. Series 9, I believe, will be called Doctor Clara.

Bad writing, bad characterizations, arbitrary world-building, fantasy masquerading poorly as science-fiction (the TARDIS is not an incredible machine, but rather a “magic box”) - it’s enough to envision David Tennant’s Doctor cozying up to some BBC executive and asking, while pointing to Moffat, “Don’t you think he looks tired?”

But just as I recovered my appreciation for Star Trek by viewing everything post-Rodenberry as fan fiction, sometimes for the better but usually for the worse, I’m comfortable relegating the entirely disposable New Who to the same status.

5.12.14

Cynicism is an easy currency to trade in, especially when the subject is the government and its initiatives – and popular entertainment is a large marketplace. Consider child protective services and related efforts to help distressed children; how often is the social worker positioned relative to families as the internal affairs investigator is to the police? In Luna Gale, playwright Rebecca Gilman wisely resists the impulse to be cynical without resorting to romanticism. Her depiction of a social worker’s efforts on behalf of the titular baby is poignant, yes, but also ... READ THE REST AT THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE